Art: Pennsylvania Romantic

At 37, Walter Stuempfig has earned a niche for himself as one of the nation's foremost "romantic" painters (TIME, Dec. 12, 1949). The subject of much of his romanticism: the streets and suburban landscapes of his native Pennsylvania. Last week the prize exhibit of Stuempfig's latest Manhattan show was a big, misty view of a town he has been painting for two decades.

Norristown (wrongly identified as Conshohocken in the exhibition catalogue), ten miles from Stuempfig's Chestnut Hill home, is far from romantic to the unpracticed eye. But by painting it from a vantage point overlooking the Schuylkill River, Stuempfig has thrown new light on its smoke-darkened silhouettes. Using a mixed technique of tempera with oil glazes on heavy canvas, Stuempfig gradually built a spacious river town veiled in a warm and somehow sad early morning dimness. The neo-classical composition recalls Corot's Italian landscapes, and its distant, county-courthouse dome might almost be mistaken for St. Peter's in Rome. "Pennsylvania towns," Stuempfig insists, "do have an Italian look."

Stuempfig shuns modern experiments, keeps a reproduction of a Corot in his studio, and constantly combs his own neighborhood for moving, nostalgic subjects. Asked why his landscapes so often look sad, he replies: "Maybe it's because even the landscape isn't safe any more, what with these new turnpikes and everything."